A common form of packaging for an article is known as "bubble" packaging. An elongate sheet of rigid plastics material is moulded to conform generally to the shape of the article to be packaged. The plastics sheet can then be folded about the article to sandwich the article between its two halves.
For industrial purposes, it is desirable to decrease the amount of different steps in the packing process to a minimum in order to reduce costs and maximise packing speed. Furthermore, it is desirable to minimise packaging volume and to enable packaging to be reusable by the end-user.
Bubble packaging requires accurate alignment of the article to be packaged and of the two halves of the plastics sheet during the packing process. This is a relatively time consuming operation. The assembled packaging may also have a non-uniform shape which makes the bundling together of several packagings difficult. Bubble packaging uses a relatively large amount of plastics material and may therefor be uneconomic and wasteful.